Rory
The email hit every inbox on the eleventh floor at once, subject line in capital letters, and I felt the whole office's temperature drop about ten degrees the second I opened it.
**URGENT: BRANFORD DEAL AT RISK — ALL HANDS ON CALL WITHIN THE HOUR.**
I didn't fully understand the stakes until I watched Priya's face go pale reading the same message two desks over, muttering something about the Branford account being one of the company's largest active contracts, the kind of deal that took months to build and could unravel in a single bad afternoon if nobody moved fast enough to stop it.
"How bad is bad?" I asked, already saving my current work, some instinct telling me the rest of the day had just been cancelled.
"Bad enough that I've never seen this specific email format before, a
